Is 7D focus far better than 40D?

How would you rate the focus ability of the 7D against the 40D? Low light, good light - fast action. Real world impressions. Thanks.

I went from the 40d to the 7d and so far I seem to be getting alot more keepers when shooting action like hockey!
I also like all the extra options for focus over the 40 that even the 50 does not have.
I am in no way a pro so I can not really tell you what I am doing but I just feel that my 7d is way better and point and spray .

I have been using it with my 17-55 and 70-200 2.8 IS with very good results.

I'd think the new AF system of the 7D can out focus a 40D. It's what it was designed to do. With my limited time with the 7D, it hit the focus lock fast, and accurate.

My subjective impression: I've used the 7D a few times late at night with minimal light, and it has surprisingly little trouble. My 40D hunts more in those situations, though some times if I'm patient, it will eventually find enough to lock on to. Stated otherwise, you can use the 7D AF in low-light situations where you simply can't use the 40D AF.

For good light/fast action, the 7D is, I think, a hair quicker to nail focus--a few times, I've been surprised when I thought for sure I'd just missed and probably would have with the 40D.

I was quite happy with the 40D AF. I compared it then and still think it was as good as the 1D Classic and better than the 1D MkIIN. I've only had the 7D about 3 weeks and it's been gray and nasty most of the time, and I do not have a fast Canon lens right now. I use a Bigma that is f/6.3, slow, especially on dark days. While the 7D is great at high ISO, 1600 looks very nice, it's still dark and gray for the AF sensor. Saying that, I have found I miss more shots with the 7D than I did with the 40D. Mostly of birds in flight.

This could be because of the C.f settings I have dialed in, but I'm not sure. Just haven't had enough practice with it. If I lived in Florida with great sunlight all the time, I think it would be better.

Thanks to all for your input.

Mitch, thanks for your opinion, my main concern is how either the 7D or even a 40D, will perform for shooting birds. BIF is a challenge, and any edge that the equipment might provide, would be welcome.

I actually have a 30D and have been happy with it, except using it for BIF. When I have to crop, I need a little better IQ

Some of my best BIF shots to date were taken with the 40D. Further, I could crop those files up to 100% and with a little noise reduction and sharpening, I got really fine shots. As I said, AF was very fine and responsive.

So far, the 7D does not seem to crop as much as I would think, without adding nosie. I don't know exactly why this is yet, cause it makes no sense. An 18Mp image should crop a lot more than a 10Mp image. But that's not what I am seeing so far.

Also, CS3 no longer opens my 7D RAWS, and my 3gig P4 processor does not want to keep up with the new DPP software needed to convert the RAW's to tiff so I can edit them in CS3. I will need to rebuild my computer soon.

And then, there is the matter of saving hundreds, and then thousands, and eventually tens of thousands of 22.6Mb files for posterity. A very real problem.

Yes, the 7D does have some serious advantages though. The colors and image quality is very smooth. High ISO is no longer an exercise in fear management. It does shoot at 8fps.

The 40D is still a serious contender for BIF, especially if you can afford big glass. And the price is right. Don't be afraid to buy one, especially if you can find a new one or buy a Canon Refurb.

Mitch, thanks again for your input. It is great to hear real world opinion in my main area of photo interest.

I do indeed hear you about the increase in file size, and also the fact that one has to redo the software and computer, just to be able to use the new camera. It certainly does start to affect the bottom line, in terms of cost and aggravation.

There was a saying that we used at work, that I just loved: " The enemy of good, is better".

Well, with any luck, Eagle season will open here this year. That's what I judge my cameras and lenses by. If I can shoot an eagle making a fishing run, it comes out sharp and I can print a 16x20 sharp image from the files, I consider it a series Birding camera. The 40D was able to do that. Let's see what the 7D does.

These Eagles were all shot with the 40D.

And these Orioles.

my 7d is amazingly better. Its a lot bigger improvement from 40d>7d vs what 20d>40d was a few years ago.

One thing to remember, if focus is important make sure you are using 2.8 or better lenses so you can fully utilize the focus sensors.

Your talking $4000 to $6000 worth of glass for longer lenses. Far beyond the means of most people who will buy a 7D. If focus is important to you, your camera should focus with any lens. Especially a camera body that costs $1700.

I shoot with a Canon 500 f4.5, and that is close enough to the 2.8 lens for me. Actually I don't think I would really like the Canon 400 f2.8, even if I could affort to buy it.

Mitch, those are some great Eagle and oriole shots! Yes, I will be going out for Eagles in about 2 weeks.

Here is one of my favorite shots and it was with a Rebel and the 500 f.5

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canonloader wrote in post #9014905
So far, the 7D does not seem to crop as much as I would think, without adding nosie. I don't know exactly why this is yet, cause it makes no sense. An 18Mp image should crop a lot more than a 10Mp image. But that's not what I am seeing so far.

Mitch, until recently I was thinking along the same lines, but had not considered the two following factors that would effect what I see when editing the images:

• Apparent magnification effect caused by pixel density -- The sensor area of the 7D is essentially the same as other APS-C models such as the 40D and XTi, but in terms of photodiode density the 7D's density is almost 180% of the 40D and XTi density -- that's almost double as many photodiode sensors. Identical images taken with the 7D and any of these other APS-C 10 MP models will have the same physical size on the sensor, but if you compare the images on your monitor and judge quality by pixel dimensions alone, the 7D image will be magnified almost eighty percent larger in area. That is quite likely to show some things such as lens softness, camera shake, or axial chromatic aberration that may not be as evident on the other image. If comparing the images from these cameras, it would be more equitable to reduce the 7D image to 75% of its original pixel dimensions which corresponds to a reduction to about 56% of its original area. In other words, reduce the 7D dimensions from 5184 X 3456 to 3888 X 2592 so that it will be the same pixel size as the 40D or XTi image as well as having the same physical dimensions).
  
• Masking effect of lower density sensors -- The photodiodes on sensors with a lower density such as the 40D and XTi will "see" less detail than the 7D sensor with its much greater density and gapless coverage. Lower density sensors have somewhat the same effect as a "low-pass" or "smoothing" filter which would tend to hide some of the "warts" in lens performance. So, when we view 7D images at full size they will be more affected by lens issues such as slightly missed focus, limitations in sharpness (diffraction), and chromatic aberration. It is a new set of paradigms for judging images and I still have not completely adapted.

canonloader wrote in post #9014905
Also, CS3 no longer opens my 7D RAWS, and my 3gig P4 processor does not want to keep up with the new DPP software needed to convert the RAW's to tiff so I can edit them in CS3. I will need to rebuild my computer soon.

In the beginning, I was going back and forth between DPP and ACR trying to decide which to use. DPP is slower than molasses in winter when rendering full sized images at final resolution (it goes through about three or four intermediate resolutions before it finally gets there). And then writing a TIF in DPP is really slow and the files are huge. Since I still have CS3 (and probably will for quite a while), I am in the same boat as you are regarding converting files, but I have finally decided that if I use DNG Converter and then process the digital negative files in ACR, I prefer the results over using DPP to create TIF files. Also, the Digital Negative route is considerably faster than the long waits in DPP. The one sticking point is that the current camera profile for the 7D in Adobe's conversion engine is just a generic beta version that does not give color and contrast that I am completely happy with (everything has a slight yellow bias). Another problem is that shadows have a reddish cast, but that can be corrected in ACR. My interim solution to this is that I used Adobe's DNG Profile Editor (which is a freebie on their web site) to create my own profiles. I am fairly pleased with the results.

I have been following the discussions from the gurus on Adobe's Camera Raw forum and read that they are coming out with some really powerful features in the next release of ACR (5.6). However, those new capabilities will only be compatible with CS4.

canonloader wrote in post #9014905
And then, there is the matter of saving hundreds, and then thousands, and eventually tens of thousands of 22.6Mb files for posterity. A very real problem.

I feel your pain, Mitch. Even though I have a rather decent computer with a dual processor and really fast memory and lots of it, I am concerned about filling up my 2 TB hard drives in short order, especially since I am shooting lots of images. I probably need to be more aggressive in deleting files since I can't possibly have a need for all that I have saved. I doubt that posterity will be interested in all of my photographs.

I see very little difference between the 40D/7D when using center point for focus of moving subjects (7D may be a tad faster) --- move that point off center and the 7D will smoke the 40D every time.

monty28428 wrote in post #9016473
I see very little difference between the 40D/7D when using center point for focus of moving subjects (7D may be a tad faster) --- move that point off center and the 7D will smoke the 40D every time.

My baseline for focusing is the XTi, so I took a quantum leap ahead with the 7D.